Richard Rohr: Faith as “Trust” or “Confidence”
Once you are “grafted to the Vine,” to use Jesus’ words (John 15:4-5), you really don’t have to be anxious about many things (Luke 10:40). You really don’t have to be worried about the next moment or about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). What you can trust is that you are being guided; in fact, almost everything is seen as guidance. It’s your ability to trust that there is guidance available which allows it to become guidance! You realize that God is letting this happen to you now to teach you something, to show you something, or to love you in a new way. Basically you switch from the fixing, fully understanding, and controlling mode to the trusting, listening, and allowing mode.
.. Faith, as we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus’ usage of the same, is much closer to our words “trust” or “confidence” than it is about believing doctrines to be true (which demands almost no ego surrender or real change of the small self).